


In All My Dreams (I Drown)

by ReaperWriter



Series: Mansion House Nocturnes [1]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: 19th century mores, Catch 22, Civil War, F/M, Jed Introspection, Love, One Shot, marriage of inconvenience, probably, requited or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 02:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6137689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s not sure what the greater tragedy in his life is: being married to a woman he has never and will never love, or being in love with a women he can never hope to be with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In All My Dreams (I Drown)

He’s not sure what the greater tragedy in his life is: being married to a woman he has never and will never love, or being in love with a women he can never hope to be with.  Sitting there, looking at Mary as she cries for all the things she’s lost, he also thinks that there are greater tragedies than his own.

He married Eliza because it’s what his father wished.  Well, if he is to be truly honest with himself, he married her because it’s what his mother wished, and his father spent every year of his life, as long as Jed can remember, trying to make his wife happy.  And for the first time, as he stands in their church and promises to honor and comfort and care for this woman he little knows nor cares about, he feels like his father might be proud of him.

He marries Eliza because he is technically his father’s heir, though Ezra is so much more suited to the role.  He marries Eliza because their families’ lands abut each other, and its good business so that if her brother, God forbid, dies, she’ll be the heiress.  He marries Eliza because she has the fine, genteel manners his mother expects…no, demands of a women carrying the Foster name.  He marries Eliza because there is an expectation that he should be married, should have children, should settle down and stop mucking about with this medicine nonsense like his Uncle Aaron.  After all, trades are for younger sons, if they don’t enter the clergy or the military.

He marries Eliza, but he doesn’t love her.  He doesn’t know her, and as they begin their lives together, he finds he doesn’t want to know her.  He doesn’t relish the idea of the marital bed, avoids it as much as possible.  She is cold to him, lying stiffly under him with her eyes shut, flustered and angry when he tries to make it a pleasant experience for her.  “Do your duty and get out.” 

He doesn’t love Eliza, who looks at him with disappointment when he drags her to Baltimore.  He doesn’t love Eliza who rails at him about coming home from his studies and his surgery with blood on his fine lawn shirts, even though she neither sews nor launders them.  He doesn’t love Eliza, who has no time nor inclination for reading or pursuits of the mind, but instead spends her time making endless social calls and shopping trips.  He does not love Eliza, who can’t understand that saving lives takes precedence over balls and teas and dinner.

He does not love Eliza for her vitriol when he backs the Union.  He does not love her for her silent treatment of him in the move to Alexandria.  He does not love her in her demands that he resign his contract; that they leave to follow her family who has fled for California; that he owes her happiness over his sense of duty and honor.  He doesn’t love her when she tells him he has little enough of either.  He thinks, perhaps, the first time he could love her is when she leaves him.  And even then, he cannot.  Because though she is gone, their union remains like a millstone around his neck.

He doesn’t love Mary, not at first.  At first, she represents everything about his own side that he can’t stand.  Her higher moral causes, her idealism, her refusal to be cowed by him, or anyone.  He is loyal to the Union.  His great grandfather fought through Yorktown, through the bloody remnant fighting after, until a bullet caught him in the Carolinas and he died.  He believes in the idea of one nation, indivisible, but certainly not in fighting purely for abolition’s sake.

He does not love Mary as she lies to him about the ligature procedure.  He’s fairly certain Dragon Dix hasn’t learned that one, and he thinks if he were less tired, he might have pressed her harder, demanded more from her. He doesn’t love Mary when he has to point out that the Confederate soldiers in their war don’t bleed grey, but red, just like every Union man. 

He doesn’t exactly love Mary when she helps him with the trepanation of the soldier with aphemia.  It’s a dangerous thing to do, one that could get them both thrown out on their ears if it fails, and he’s more than a little surprised she goes along with him.  He’s not sure what she sees in him that makes her willing to try.

He likes Mary when she doesn’t buckle under the strain.  When she runs up against Hale and Hastings and Bullen and just keeps going.  When she finds the work arounds to do what is needed for the patients, regardless of what anyone tells her.  He thinks he might hate her just a little when his mother show’s up with Ezra, demanding a miracle that he can’t possibly provide.  Mary doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look at him with pity.  She steps in and helps him, forces Emma to stay, makes sure he can do what needs to be done to save his brother’s life, despite the fact he’s a Johnny Reb.

He’s fairly certain he loathes her when she finds him later in his room, in a pile of glass, high as a kite and maudlin as hell.  She sees him weak, broken, a shell of a man in a way Eliza, who shared his life for years, never did.  And she offers him hope.  Salvation.  A fresh start.  Oh yes, he loathes her.  But more, he loathes himself.

He thinks he begins to love her the night of the damnable ball.  In that soft blue dress, her hair up, her smile soft.  And then later, forcing him to right his own course, to help Aurelia; that same blue dress stained with blood in a way that would have made Eliza aghast with horror.  When they finish, and he ends up surrendering the morphine he’s managed to sneak to her, she doesn’t look at him with pity.  She looks at him with kindness and understanding.  And he believes, just a little bit, that her expression could, just possibly, make him a better man.

He is sure he loves her when he goes to intervene with Samuel.  He likes the man, respects him, and is surprised and pleased by his skill.  But if he is entirely honest with himself, he was never cut out for a soldier, for confrontations, for the heat of the skirmish.  No, if Samuel was merely his acquaintance, he might have let things play out.  But Mary clearly respects and cares for Samuel.  And he respects and honors and cares for Mary.  And thank God, it works out in the end. 

He knows beyond a doubt he loves her as he sits at her side, watching her try her hardest for the shirker.  For a man written off as honorless, cowardly, not worth any intervention. He watches her try to save him, try to comfort him, try to make right for him what she, in the end, couldn’t for her beloved Baron.  And he watches her cry as the man passes.  Watches her weep for him, and others like him, and for herself and the man she loved.  Who she still loves.

He loves her.  And she still loves a ghost.  And he is not free, either way.  So, he does the only thing he can do.  He offers her comfort.  And he prays for the end of the war that will set him free from the torment of being so close to the woman he loves, and unable to do a damnable thing about it.


End file.
